Data loss... for now
Before you freak out with the title let me tell you this: AM2R IS SAFE, I keep weekly backups of the main project folder in different media types.
A couple of weeks ago one of my SATA drives stopped working. It was the main project drive in my studio PC, so all of my current audio projects can´t be read anymore. As I usually backup audio projects as soon as they´re finished, I have some very angry customers who lost their on-production album. Also, one of those projects was the AM2R soundtrack.
While I have some test mixes in my laptop, most of the music engine work was done using placeholders (the original Metroid 2 soundtrack). I was already tired of hearing the songs during production, hearing them all the time in-game during testing would be even more tiresome.
Now, I did some testing on a friend´s house. We tried replacing the drive´s controller board, using parts from the same drive model. The motor starts, there is drive activity, but it´s not recognized by the bios (or Windows). We noticed that, even if the drive model is the same, the controller boards we tested had a different serial number than the one in my drive. I´m pretty sure that all of the data is intact, but I can´t acess it!
So, if you ever had a Western Digital Caviar WD5000AAKS drive with broken sectors, or anything that doesn´t affect the controller board, please get in touch with me. There is a chance that you have the piece of hardware I need lying around in a pile of old HDDs.
While I was dealing with this, there´s been quite some progress. The new music engine is done, and all of the tiresome tasks of managing loaded songs and crossfades between tracks are now automated with simple scripts. Assigning the corresponding track to each section of the game is now really easy, and it should be complete within these days. There´s also been some performance optimizations here and there, the most visible one is the new HUD code. Since all of the elements are now separated by different scripts, I could add parameters to allow customizable HUD layouts. If tweaking the position of the HUD elements is something that you´d like to use, let me know and I´ll add the option.
Hopefully, I´ll be able to solve the drive problem soon.
The game is still alive, and it will be done. I promise.
Have a good weekend.
A couple of weeks ago one of my SATA drives stopped working. It was the main project drive in my studio PC, so all of my current audio projects can´t be read anymore. As I usually backup audio projects as soon as they´re finished, I have some very angry customers who lost their on-production album. Also, one of those projects was the AM2R soundtrack.
While I have some test mixes in my laptop, most of the music engine work was done using placeholders (the original Metroid 2 soundtrack). I was already tired of hearing the songs during production, hearing them all the time in-game during testing would be even more tiresome.
Now, I did some testing on a friend´s house. We tried replacing the drive´s controller board, using parts from the same drive model. The motor starts, there is drive activity, but it´s not recognized by the bios (or Windows). We noticed that, even if the drive model is the same, the controller boards we tested had a different serial number than the one in my drive. I´m pretty sure that all of the data is intact, but I can´t acess it!
So, if you ever had a Western Digital Caviar WD5000AAKS drive with broken sectors, or anything that doesn´t affect the controller board, please get in touch with me. There is a chance that you have the piece of hardware I need lying around in a pile of old HDDs.
While I was dealing with this, there´s been quite some progress. The new music engine is done, and all of the tiresome tasks of managing loaded songs and crossfades between tracks are now automated with simple scripts. Assigning the corresponding track to each section of the game is now really easy, and it should be complete within these days. There´s also been some performance optimizations here and there, the most visible one is the new HUD code. Since all of the elements are now separated by different scripts, I could add parameters to allow customizable HUD layouts. If tweaking the position of the HUD elements is something that you´d like to use, let me know and I´ll add the option.
Hopefully, I´ll be able to solve the drive problem soon.
The game is still alive, and it will be done. I promise.
Have a good weekend.
Comments
And later the only thing that you have to do is run a Ubuntu Live CD and try to get all the data that you lost.
Recently i was having the same problem, and here i am, with a regenerated HDD
Seriously, try the HDD Regenerator you can have a chance to get back the lost data.
There are just too many benefits to version control to not use it (disaster-proofing your project being one of them).
There are multiple free hosters, such as: https://bitbucket.org/ (for a Mercurial repo with a nice interface)
or
http://beanstalkapp.com/ (SVN or GIT, great interface too)
Beanstalk also have a great guide section with detailed introductions to version control: http://guides.beanstalkapp.com/
Good luck :)
Good Luck and thank god you back things up!
If at all possible, I'd get it looked at by a professional.
Messing with it or trying to recover/read it without the right tool can damage the drive in some cases. It depends on exactly what went wrong.
Anyways, thanks for the update doc! I hope everything gets better soon!
sad to hear from the technical issue you had, hope things can be restored as before!
As for the HUD you talked about, I would love to see some possibilities of tweaking your personal taste on the HUD ( positioning, display, modifications to certain possible extend? )
all your fans are behind you...good luck
www.salvagedata.com